2 Birds Investigates: Bum Wine!

First things first: T.G.I. Hagman!

As of 4:48am, Larry Hagman is...alive!

Now, I have a question for you: Why? Why is it physically impossible for me and Chris to do an investigation that goes smoothly? Like, from start to finish; everything just goes right. We have a plan, we execute the plan, and then it's over. Period. No shenanigans. No embarrassing physical pain. Just a successful investigation. But no, apparently this isn't an option, as evidenced (yet again) this past weekend when Chris and I investigated "bum wine."

First and foremost, I had no god given idea what bum wine was:

Tulane Chris: "It's malt grape wine that's popular among homeless because it's so potent and cheap."

Meg: "Oh. So like a 40?"

TC: "No, that's a 40."

M: "So like that malt beer that comes in the big cans?"

TC: "No, that's malt beer."

Meg: "Wait...so it's wine?"

TC: "Why don't you on hop the Wikipedia, Princess."

So then I spent an embarrassing amount of time researching bum wine (big ups to bumwine.com!), which reminds me of the time Ex Co-Blogger Chris tried to get me to do poppers and we got into a huge fight because I did a project in 10th grade on Sudden Sniffing Death Syndrome and that's how people die, and he said he was pre-med in college so I should just believe him that poppers are harmless and I was like, "UH, BULLCORN," so we spent 20 minutes fighting over the poppers Wikipedia entry until we realized we were fucking losers and watched Hocus Pocus instead. True story.

Once I actually grasped the concept of bum wine, we set out to find some. This task proved significantly harder than we originally anticipated. Considering I couldn't find a liquor store in my neighborhood that sold Andre last New Year's Eve, I assumed trying to find bum wine around these parts would be fruitless, so we headed east towards someplace slightly more..."spicy"—Columbia Heights.

Ah, that's more like it.

Well, actually, first we went to Target where I impulse bought a floor lamp because it was on sale and I've been living off candlelight and Hat ever since my old one died, oh, almost two years ago. As exciting as this purchase was (and continues to be!), buying it before we found bum wine turned out to be a horrible, horrible decision on my part. Why? Because we had to go to seven liquor stores before we found one that carried bum wine and that lamp was fucking heavy. I can imagine we were quite a sight: two nerdy white kids hoofin' it up and down 14th street, one hauling a giant lamp on her back, panting ever-so-slightly and muttering a unique array of swears under her breath, going into any and every liquor store all, "Y'ALL GOT MAD DOG? YES? NO? NO? CHRIST!"

At one point we just flat-out gave up and decided to buy scratch-offs in hopes that one of us would win the jackpot and doing the investigation would be a non-issue. Gold Fever, baby!

Shockingly, that plan didn't quite pan out, so it was back to bum wine hunting. Thankfully we found a liquor store that carried bum wine shortly thereafter, so we loaded it into my giant lamp bag, flicked a 10 under the partition, put our monocles on and spun our canes all the way back to my neighborhood to trash our livers in the name of a good investigation, which we proudly present to you now.

2 Birds Investigates: Bum Wine

[Chris asked me to insert an animated gif here because he's quote, "trying to get into animated gifs these days." "O...K. Did you have a particular gif in mind?" "Meh. Dancing banana, I guess."

...Christ.]

How to host a bum wine party:

Step 1: Google "how to host a wine party". Apparently the three key things to notice are color, bouquet (what we bums call smell) and taste. You'll have to wait for the next morning to rate the intensity of the hangover.

Step 2: Take out two fresh glasses and a salad plate of nine peanut M&M's to "cleanse the palette" between "wines".

Step 3: Designate a legal heir.

Step 4: Decide the tasting order of your wines. Generally you want to go from light to dark with a rosé in the middle. However, if all of your wines are the same industrial pink, order them so that you'll be a little drunk by the time you get to the ones you really dread.

Step 5: Remember to set out an extra glass to pour the wine you inevitably can't finish into. Chris and I didn't know the technical term for this, so we just lovingly referred to it as "The Bukkaki Cup".

Step 6: Take half a Xanax, go to your safe space, and begin.

WINE 1: Arbor Mist Peach Chardonnay

For the reckless Mormon divorcée in you!

Color: I appreciate that in our notes, my observation was, "It looks like carbonated urnine," whereas Chris' was, "Like the bright clear yellow of a jaundiced man's eyes." You know it's a good writing partnership when one partner's writing fixates on body fluids and the other's sounds like a haiku.

Bouquet: Like if a peach had little Chardonnay barfs down the front of its blouse.

Taste: Image you're a baby bird and mama bird comes to regurgitate breakfast for you, but instead she regurgitates a sorority initiation party and a bag of CVS Peach-Os and then pecks you to death.

WINE 2: Manishevitz Cream White Concord

The Eleventh Plague

Color: It looks like urine. We're not even trying to be funny; it just genuinley looks like human urine. Like you could take it to the doctor, hand it to a nurse and the test would show: You are comprised of 100% Diabetes, but this is definetley urine.

Bouquet: Ooof. Sniffing this got me in a way. It smells exactly like a Bath & Body Works body splash I wore in middle school. It was the crucial third leg of the Meg McBlogger middle school fashion triangle:

Taste: 6,000 years of unbroken tradition, but their wine still tastes like simple syrup and Old Spice.

WINE 3: Mad Dog Banana Red

"Take me down to the Pradise City where the bananas are red and the girls are throwing up into the gutter"

Color:

Red is nature's way of saying, "DANGER!"

Smell: Meg: "This smells like nail polish remover and banana Laffy Taffy."

Chris: "Frankly, that may be what it is."

Taste: My favorite conversation of the evening occrued directly after tasting this:

Chris: "DO YOU KNOW THAT NURSERY RHME, 'QUEEN QUEEN CAROLINE, WASHED HER HAIR IN TURPENTINE?!?!'"

Meg: "No..."

Chris: [100% defeated] "Oh. Well. Nevermind."

This, in my opinion, was the worst out of them all. It just tasted like straight-up chemicals. Like a ration of Soviet People's Holiday Drink that got left behind in a Ukranian missle silo. So much so, we successfully used it clean Thai food drippings off my coffee table and grime off my bathroom sink:

It left a streak-free shine—presumably on our stomachs as well.

WINE 4: Wild Irish Rose Red

Chris told you Ireland was the Third World

Color: It was the closest out of them all to being a real food color. It was less DANGER! and more PROCEED WITH EXTREME CAUTION!

Bouquet: Sweet like a first kiss—assuming your first kiss was with a truck stop hooker low on cash, but high on dreams and Newport Lights.

Taste: At first it just tastes incredibly sweet and you're like, "Well this isn't that bad." And then it tastes exactly like a licking a shag carpet.

WINE 5: Four Loko Watermelon

Banned at the University of Rhode Island!

[Note: Chris and I had no idea what we were getting oursrelves into with this one. We were at our 780th liquor store of the evening and needed one more wine or wine product to round out the tasting. In desperation, we went to the cooler to get a canned beverage and chose Four Loko simply because it was at eye level. The next morning, we got an email from a reader asking us if we'd heard of this new Four Loko craze and since then it seems to have exploded onto the National stage like a pink, caffeinated Christine O'Donnell. We really appreciate being 24 hours ahead of this trend because we were the kids growing up who were 24 months late on things like pogs, Airwalks and Mayim Bialik.

Here's what we were getting into:

]

Color: I was originally offended when Chris said this, but the best way to describe it really is as, "Hello Kitty's pussy."

Bouquet: It smells like if Jolly Ranchers had night sweats.

Taste: Chris and I were like the opening credits to Patty Duke when tasting this one: they walk alike; they talk alike; at times they even recoil alike—what a crazy pair! The taste wasn't that bad, but then all of a sudden there's a sleeper taste; like a fizzy, sour burn in the back of your throat that hit us at exactly the same time. You will never know how beatiful that moment was. It was like:

WINE 6: The Bukkuke Cup

"I'm not drunk! I'll prove it—I'll drink from the Bukkake Cup!"

Color: The Devil is a woman. And she's raggin'.

Bouquet: If you take a deep breath and look in the mirror, you'll see how you're going to die.

Taste: You know what it tasted like? Exactly what it was.

WINE 7: Garnier Full Control Hairspray: All Day Flexible Hold, and a paper bag

7,500 brain damaged teenagers can't be wrong

Color: Misty.

Bouquet: You can really smell the Fruit Micro-Waxes!

Taste: Headache. Dizzy. Really made us wonder how latchkey kids do it.

Thud.

Have a great weekend, guys! Lerve!

De-bunking "The Kush"

Have you heard about this newfangled product called "The Kush"? I have. Because you keep emailing it to me being like LOLZYAHHAHAHA YOU NEED THIS, YOU FREAK! Now, while I always love getting emails from you fine people, I'm slightly offended so many of you insinuated I need The Kush. What is The Kush, you may ask? Well...

"The Kush is designed to fit between the breasts to maintain a more natural shape while resting on your side. No straps, no underwires, no constraints, no adhesives and no garments needed - the slip-resistant surface and contoured shape help keep Kush in place as a woman rolls from one side to the other during sleep. Providing millions of women with the opportunity for a more restful and natural sleep, Kush Supports Like A Dream"

Here's my beef with The Kush: it, like so many other things, is trying to make a ho into a housewife. The Kush acts like it's a helpful product for big-hootered girls. But it's not. And that offends me. I can only see two groups of people for whom The Kush would be helpful:

1.) Old Saggy Tits McGee
2.) Women recovering from breast enhancement surgery who can't sleep on their side without experiencing pain

For both of these groups of women, I'm sure The Kush is super helpful. And to them I say mozel tov! But I don't appreciate the insinuation that girls with boobs bigger than a C-cup need to sleep with the aid of a boob separating device. I already feel like a freak. Life is hard with monster boobs: dresses are hard to zip; you can't wear button-up shirts without the middle button looking like it's clinging on for dear life; they don't make hot lingerie in size "circus freak"; bathing suites look pornogrpahic; your friends always try on your bra at sleepovers and stuff 'em with grapefruits and strut around and everyone has a good laugh but secretly you're crying on the inside—it's hard, OK?! It's not all giggles and motorboatin'. So thanks Kush, thanks for telling the world that in addition to these every day struggles, I also have to sleep with my arm between my boobs:


Who are you? Steve Carell? Boobs do not feel like sandbags. When you lay on your side, they don't stack on top of each other and cause you discomfort. They just kind of chill there. Now I know you're saying, "Well your boobs just chill there Meg because you're a young 24-year-old. When you get older they're going to turn into sandbags and drop to your knees and then who'll be buying a Kush?!" And to that, I say FINE! GREAT! GRAND! WONDERFUL! But advertise accordingly! Don't show a young, pert chick attempting to fist her boobs to sleep, when you really should only be showing this:


Because that is your target audience. That is who this product is made for. And yes, of course no one wants to see their grandma tittie-fucking a purple god-knows-what, but guess what? That's not my problem! Stop making me look like a freak! Just advertise your product using the person who should actually be using it! Like are we really supposed to think this product is the new, hip way to wipe your ass?

No, of course not! We all know this is for comically obese people who can't wipe themselves. Why are we dressing it up and pretending it's something it's not? Everywhere I look, I see false advertising and this American consumer will not stand for it!

In order to properly debunk The Kush's dishonest marketing campaign completely, I did a few experiments last night.

Exhibit A:

Here I am lying on my side. I assure you that I am not wearing a bra and I am in a comfortable sleeping position. Notice that once in a side-sleeping position, my boobs do not stack like giant cinder blocks crushing my spine and everything else that stands in their way.

Exhibit B:

A Jesus candle, the shape and width of which is comparable to The Kush. It fits perfectly betwixt the bosoms and it's holy iconography reinforces that this is a good, clean, Christian experiment.

Exhibit C:

Notice that when the Jesus candle is placed between the bosoms, it does not rest comfortably, but rather falls out of place. Now this could be because I'm using a large, heavy Jesus candle and not a slip-resistant Kush, sure, but it could also be because in reality, younger breasts don't stack like painful human bricks on top of each other when one lays on her side. And yet, this is exactly what The Kush asks us to believe. The Kush shows a young, pert woman using their product and promises to, and I quote, "fit between the breasts and maintain a more natural shape." To which I say SHENANIGANS! How can the breasts in question maintain their natural shape, if they are already in their naturally separated shape to begin with? Ah-hah! They can't. The young woman in the video is just a rue to glamorize the product and distract you from those who really need it—the old and the surgically modified. Which are both a fine set of people. God willing, I'll be both old and surgically modified myself one day. All I'm saying is, I'm neither old nor surgically modified yet. So stop advertising my body type as your product's average user because you're making me look like a sandbag-breasted über freak.

Oh Kush. Your tangled web of lies has turned you into yet another stupid and useless product that somebody somewhere (who's not me) is profiting from, much like The Snuggie, The Tinge, The Peekaru and the Go-Girl.

Therefore, Jesus and I proudly proclaim this myth: BUSTED.

First you took my people's land and now you take my Facebook profile?!

God damnit! After I harassed you all to be my BFF on Facebook, old Mark "The Shnozz" Zuckerberg deleted my account:

Come on Zuckerberg...what did I ever do to you? You have billions of dollars and I have...dozens of dollars.

Facebook deleted my account because I "misrepresented myself" by using a fake name, which violates the terms of agreement. In my defense: oh-pshh-ah! That giant box of six-point-circus-type could have said I do hereby decree to wear a onesie and carry one of those ye-old-timey lollipops around for the rest of my life and I wouldn't have a fucking clue. If there is actually anybody out there who seriously reads the entirety of internet terms of agreement, I will give you a thousand dollars in cash and a solid high-five. It's seriously laughable to me that the act of checking a little box, while wearing my Jack Daniel's pajama pants, laying in bed, using my little laptop with my Seth Meyers Gap ad wallpaper can be considered a binding legal contract. It's on par with the contract in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Whatever happened to the days of signing in blood? Back when contracts were a gentleman's sport and a signature meant something.

I didn't even know Facebook took fake names so seriously...what with being Facebook friends with Zack Morris and Carl Winslowe and all. And where were the Facebook gestapo sophomore year when Helena made a fake profile for Ted Kennedy with the AIM screen name "iKilledAhooker"? Nothing about that profile tipped you off, Zuckerberg? Were you slightly surprised when you didn't get a news feed update on inauguration day saying, "Ted Kennedy is totes seizin' up to the geezin' up"? (Oh my God I'm so sorry. I love that silver fox water buffalo until the day I die! Although the day he dies will probably come first. Gah! I'm sorry, it just keeps coming! THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID! God Damnit!!!)

Oh, and let's not pretend you're too good to be used for promotional purposes, Facebook. You sunk that ship the day you decided to let any Tom, Dick or Mark the Molester join sans college email address, free to hide behind their shadowy blue silhouette default picture. (The question mark had more class.)

Because it's in my nature to find the sneaky and slightly dishonorable way out of a sticky situation (oh me! I'm a wily one!), I decided to send the following sternly worded email to Facebook's disabled profiles department to appeal:

To Whom it May Concern:

I am curious why my Facebook page was flagged and deleted. I did not have any offensive material, nor is my Native American name, Twobirds, a "fake name" which "misrepresents my affiliation."

I would like to think that in this day and age, people would be more sensitive to Native Americans and our everyday plight.

- Twobirds O-neblog

I then got an auto-response saying that the Facebook team thanks me for my inquiry and will get back to me soon...which they never did. I guess I deserve that.

So, my super-networking-seriously-trying-to-grow-my-readership thing lasted a whole weekend, which given my attention span is pretty impressive. Oh wellz. Back to strategizing how I'm going to bring back pogs!

Drinking Game Friday: The Halloween Edition

Happy Drinking Game Friday & Happy Halloween!

God damnit I love this holiday. Any holiday that combines mass quantities of alcohol, spooky decorations, slutty costuming and mini Kit-Kats is automatically my favorite. I’ll be celebrating this year atop Becca’s apartment for her rooftop ripper. I’m drunk just thinking about it. I’m not divulging my costume yet because there’s still time for you costume vultures to knock it off. I will say that it’s a two-man job (Talia’s my partner-in-crime) and I bought the costume components at CVS tonight: spray tan in a bottle, hairspray, fake eyelashes, liquid eyeliner and cigarettes. No I'm not Britney Spears. Give me a little more credit in the creativity department! I don't fuck around when it comes to Halloween! Of course when I was standing in line holding my white trash paraphernalia, someone I hated with a fiery, fiery passion in high school walked up and initiated conversation. You try facing your high school nemesis unemployed, living at home and holding two aerosol beauty products and a pack of Parliaments.)

At least I can drown my I-Still-Live-at-Home-Sorrows tonight with this week’s drinking game. Straighten your bunny ears, research the best bar crawl and put on your game face, it’s time for the Halloween Night Drinking Game!


Drink when you:
- See a Sarah Palin and/or Miss Alaska and/or First Dude costume
- See an Obama or McCain costume (or conversely Michelle or Cindy)
- Fuck it, when you see a political costume in general
- Have to explain your costume
- Have to ask someone what their costume is
- Regret not wearing a jacket out because it would cover up the sexy even though it’s 40 degrees out
- Inevitably make-out with someone
- Initiate conversation aimed towards making out with someone with a slurred “Iuffyourcoshtumeeee!!!” (70% of the time, it works every time)
- See a group-themed costume
- See a “sexy______” costume
- puke
- See a Maryland sex offender sign in someone’s yard (actually drink thrice—one for you, one for him and one for the kid) (too soon?)

Enjoy tonight’s debauchery and we’ll see you Monday morning!

Rebel Rebel, You've Torn Your Dress

For some reason during a staff meeting everyone at work decided to share stories of their teenage rebellion. You have not lived until you have heard a nun reference drug use and sex. I did not share mine, but it made me think back to that time in my life.

Between the ages of 13-15 I only hung out with boys, punk rock, skinhead, hardcore boys and I was the riot grrrl in their mix. I often wore short skirts, old school prom dresses or shorts, fishnets or tights, and combat boots ALWAYS COMBAT BOOTS. On a hot summer day in 1998 the boys decided to play with a favored toy among 14 year old males, cheery bombs.

The Runaways classic Cherry Bomb was my theme song, and this meant my participation in the fiery tomfoolery was mandatory. Being little suburban youth in revolt the sewer in my friend’s cul-de-sac was the obvious place to dispose of the flaming pink crackers. After a few rounds were sent down the sewer, the action lost its novelty. I was hot—the fact I was wearing black tights and combat boots might have been a factor in the heat-- and our apatite for destruction was quenched, we called it quits and went inside. My friend’s mother greeted us in the doorway looking livid.

A neighbor saw the boys acting like delinquents and throwing cherry bombs down the sewer. When she went to flush her toilet and it did not work she put two and two together. Our actions messed up the plumbing for the entire cul-de-sac. This lack of flushing lasted for three days (luckily I did not live in the same neighborhood) at the time we had no clue our actions would cause a neighborhood backup.

I apologized to livid mom, and she told me she knew I did nothing and that it was sweet of me to stick up for my friends. I got away with my actions and the boys were grounded. It sucked all my friends could not hang out for a week because of something I did, so in a sense I was socially grounded.

This happened several times and I always got away with my actions and the boys got punished. It taught me being the only girl in a group gets you out of trouble, and if you befriend mothers and they will have your back.

Anyone else share in my teenage taste of delinquency?

I wish I could quit you,
Eddie